Obmascik is best known by climbers through the book Halfway to Heaven: My White-knuckled–and Knuckleheaded–Quest for the Rocky Mountain High that chronicled his effort to climb all 54 Fourteeners over a single year. It is packed with humorous stories about the colorful characters he encountered and climbed with along the way. The book won the 2009 National Outdoor Book Award for Outdoor Literature.

The National Outdoor Book Awards Foundation called Halfway to Heaven, “Fun, humorous, and warm-hearted… a rollicking, non-stop adventure.” His prior book, The Big Year was recently made into a movie starring Owen Wilson, Jack Black, and Steve Martin. Get a sense of Mark’s humor and engaging personality in this 2009 TV interview.

CFI’s work on Mount of the Holy Cross includes delineating and reconstructing the Halfmoon summit route which is notoriously difficult to follow in places. Hikers frequently get off route on the descent, trampling fragile alpine vegetation as they seek to regain the trail. Hiker rescues are common, and the route’s routefinding difficulties have contributed to past fatalities.

In addition to constructing a more sustainable summit route, CFI will close and restore user-created campsites along East Cross Creek, designate campsites in more durable locations, and clear downed trees from the Notch Mountain trail.

CFI’s kickoff event is free. However, attendees are asked to respond in advance by email to cfi@14ers.org. The Walking Mountains Science Center is located at 318 Walking Mountains Ln. Directions can be found at: http://walkingmountains.org/page.aspx?pid=400.

The impact of the one-car collision with the building broke one of the office’s large exterior windows, severed a structural wall, hit filing cabinets, and propelled items on top of the filing cabinets throughout the main room. Controller Jerry Mack’s exterior office wall was destroyed, narrowly missing hitting the computer that holds the organization’s accounting records. (They were backed up, though.)

Needless to say, the accident has been a disruption to CFI’s work as we build to a very busy 2012 summer field season. The CFI offices will be closed through at least Friday, May 4th, and potentially into the following week. The office’s email system is up and (assuming the contractors don’t cut the power to the server) staff currently are able to access email messages. However, the office is not staffed and the phone is not being answered in real time.

The Sustainable Trails Project is conducting detailed GPS inventories of all constructed Fourteener summit trails and emerging social trails. Inventories were started on 12 peaks last summer, with analyses completed for nine of these mountains. The detailed inventories ensure that CFI has an accurate baseline inventory of all constructed trail features, identified natural resource concerns, and needed new structures. Follow-up inventories in subsequent years can show how these constructed features and natural resource problems are changing over time.

In the video you will see that the Mount Bierstadt summit route has been broken into three constructed sections and one summit section that was not constructed. These sections tie together areas with similar topography and biological resources. Within each section constructed features (retaining walls, check steps, rock staircases, etc.) designed to channel hikers and protect the trail tread are shown in color-coded icons depicting their current condition: green=OK, yellow=maintain, orange=near fail, red=fail. Blue icons indicate new features that need to be constructed in the future.

The inventory also shows identified natural resource protection issues, such as braided trails, overly wide trails in need of narrowing, and erosion. GPS-enabled photos tie to these issues so that crews know what the problems look like before they ever deploy to the field to fix them.  The photos also allow crews to see how the problems have changed since they were last inventoried.

Near the end the video shows the “report card” for the peak. A rating of 10 indicates good condition, while a rating of 1 indicates total failure.  Mount Bierstadt’s rating of 5.25 indicates it is a summit route in desperate need of lots of work. This is backed up by the supporting details: 26 percent of the trail is eroded, 13 percent is braided, and 13.5 percent is in need of narrowing.

Through detailed inventories, assigning condition value scores, and a lot of data crunching, CFI will be able to better quantify the condition of constructed Fourteener summit trails, how much work is required, how many person-hours will be required, and how much it will cost to remedy these problems. Given limited financial and human resources, the condition scores will allow CFI to target resources to the peaks (and segments) most in need of work. Considering that a constructed Fourteener trail can cost up to $400,000 to build, this tool will help CFI protect the millions of dollars and countless volunteer hours that have gone into building these popular hiking trails that protect the rare and fragile ecosystems found on Colorado’s iconic Fourteeners.

Give credit to Ben Hanus, CFI’s Sustainable Trails Program Coordinator, for his work collecting the data last summer, crunching it over the winter, and learning the ins and outs of Google Earth Pro to create the video. Expect to see more of Ben’s handiwork over the coming months.

“We are humbled by the generous spirit of the Appelson family’s gift,” said CFI Executive Director Lloyd Athearn. “They found a way to honor their daughter’s memory, protect the mountains she loved, and offer young professionals a start in the field of natural resource protection that she embarked upon before her life was tragically cut short.”

The four-month-long Kimberly Appelson Memorial Outdoor Leadership Internship works annually as part of CFI’s “Adopt-a-Peak” crew running volunteer-oriented trail maintenance and vegetation restoration projects on heavily used 14,000-foot peaks across the state. Internship participants typically are college students or recent graduates who learn trail building, alpine vegetation restoration, and volunteer management skills while leading more than 30 volunteer projects over the course of a summer season.

The internship is named after Kimberly Appelson who was born and raised in the suburban Chicago area but vacationed frequently as a child throughout the western United States and Canada on family hiking and skiing trips. Following graduation from the University of Iowa in May 2009, the lure of the western mountains drew Kimberly back to spend six months repairing and maintaining Forest Service trails in central Montana as part of a Montana Conservation Corps crew. Later that year Kimberly moved to Breckenridge to wait tables and improve her skiing in hopes of becoming a ski patroller. When the snow melted, she worked as a whitewater rafting guide on the Arkansas River, spending her free time climbing the nearby Sawatch Range Fourteener peaks. She aspired to one day summit all the 54 Colorado Fourteeners. However, on July 11, 2010, Kimberly perished in a rafting accident near Frog Rock while rafting the Arkansas River with friends. She was 23.

“We hope Kimberly’s life, adventurous spirit, and passion for protecting the mountains will live on in the many people who are touched by this internship over the years to come,” said her father, Larry Appelson. “Though the pay was low and the work hard, Kimberly loved living in the mountains and making a difference protecting the forests and trails. We hope this internship inspires other similarly inclined young people to pursue careers taking care of the mountains and forests that brought so much joy to Kimberly’s life.”

People interested in contributing to the endowment can send a check to CFI’s offices (607 10^th St, Suite 107N, Golden CO  80401) or can donate online at: http://bit.ly/y8Xtoo. Please write “Appelson Endowment” on the check or in the notes field of the online transaction.

Ben worked for Southwest Conservation Corps on CFI’s Chicago Basin project during the 2009 season, then came back in 2010 as CFI’s assistant crew leader. Last summer Ben coordinated the Sustainable Trails Project in its pilot phase and collected complete data for nine summit routes and partial data for three routes. Consultants at Booz Allen Hamilton are donating their professional services to help guide the project, which will give CFI a very powerful tool for maintaining constructed Fourteener summit trails, which represent capital assets of $250,000 to $400,000. The project will provide detailed inventories of constructed trail features and will help project on-going maintenance needs, costs, and staffing requirements.

CFI wants to thank the Colorado Mountain Club Foundation, REI, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Hunt and Carol Walker for funding the pilot phase last summer. The Forest Service has pledged funding to continue the project, and CFI is in the process of approaching other funders to ensure the project continues for the foreseeable future.